The oldest unvaccinated Covid-19 survivors in South America
Mateus Vidigal de Castro, Moníze V. R. Silva, Michel Satya Naslavsky, Marília O. Scliar, Kelly Nunes, Maria Rita Passos‐Bueno, Erick C. Castelli, Jhosiene Y. Magawa, Flávia Lopes Adami, Ana Iochabel Soares Moretti, Vivian L. de Oliveira, Silvia Beatriz Boscardin, Edécio Cunha‐Neto, Jorge Kalil, Emmanuelle Jouanguy, Paul Bastard, Jean‐Laurent Casanova, Mauricio Quiñones‐Vega, Patricia Sosa‐Acosta, Jéssica de Siqueira Guedes, Natália Pinto de Almeida, Fábio César Sousa Nogueira, Gilberto B. Domont, Keity Souza Santos, Mayana Zatz
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although older adults are at a high risk of severe or critical Covid-19, there are many cases of unvaccinated centenarians who had a silent infection or recovered from mild or moderate Covid-19. We studied three Brazilian supercentenarians, older than 110 years, who survived Covid-19 in 2020 before being vaccinated. RESULTS: Despite their advanced age, humoral immune response analysis showed that these individuals displayed robust levels of IgG and neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) against SARS-CoV-2. Enrichment of plasma proteins and metabolites related to innate immune response and host defense was also observed. None presented autoantibodies (auto-Abs) to type I interferon (IFN). Furthermore, these supercentenarians do not carry rare variants in genes underlying the known inborn errors of immunity, including particular inborn errors of type I IFN. CONCLUSION: These observations suggest that their Covid-19 resilience might be a combination of their genetic background and their innate and adaptive immunity.